After The System: Philosophy In The Epoch Of Sciences

10.1163/ej.9789004202405.i-666.23

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Chapter Summary

The hard sciences, through their broadly understood technical application, became a reality-shaping power whose contribution and progress is necessary for the continuous existence of modern societies. In the systems of German idealism, which already react to the beginning divorce of the &t;positive&t; sciences from philosophy, these two tasks became clearly distinguished from each other. Philosophy understood as the self-reflection of actually existing science reconstructs the structure of scientific theories, methods and procedures of confirmation, the internal logic of the processes of theory-change, and precisely through such a reconstruction also legitimates the claim of science to ultimate cognitive authority as the most effective form of problem-solving. Philosophy presents the problems of an epoch on the background of existential problems assumed to be universal.